Coming from everywhere, thousands flocking to Greeley for farm show

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com
Cathy and Jim Kratzke, owners of Perham, Minn.-based Metalcraft by K, work to prepare their signs Monday for the Colorado Farm Show. A total of 287 vendors will take part in this year’s farm show held at Island Grove Regional Park in Greeley.

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com
A variety of items wait to be sold while vendors continue to set up for this year's Colorado Farm Show held at Island Grove Regional Park on Monday. The farm show begins today at lasts until Thursday.

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com
A sign welcomes people to the Colorado Farm Show on Monday at Island Grove Regional Park in Greeley. The farm show will last until Thursday with 287 vendors in attendance.

JIM RYDBOM/jrydbom@greeleytribune.com
A hand-carved wood figure is just one of the many items the 287 vendors will be looking to sell at this year's Colorado Farm Show. The farm show is held at Island Grove Regional Park in Greeley until Thursday.

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Colorado Farm Show by the numbers

» 30,000 — Number of people who attend the event over three days each year

» 100 — Volunteers at the event

» 287 — Exhibitors on hand this year

» 40 — Agriculture industry experts will be speaking

» $700,000 — Estimated economic impact of Colorado Farm Show (second only to the Greeley Stampede)

» $625,000 — The most expensive piece of equipment on display at last year’s Colorado Farm Show (the Claas Jaguar forage harvester)

» 25 — The expected temperature at 9 a.m. today

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For Dave Smith, the comforts of his Nebraska dwelling — nearly 400 miles away — were in short supply Monday.

But the ambiance and familiar faces within sight were enough to make him feel at home.

“Home” these days for Smith — and the many agribusiness salesmen setting up shop at the Colorado Farm Show — is on the agricultural trade show road.

This week, that road rolls through Greeley.

The three-day event, which features nearly 300 exhibitors and dozens of experts discussing a wide array of topics, begins today.

Putting out his business cards and Abilene Machine catalogs inside the Exhibition Building at Island Grove Regional Park, Smith saw some of the same banners that hung in other booths and the nearby salesmen he had seen in September at Husker Harvest Days back in his hometown of Grand Island, Neb. — the same he saw just a few days ago in Dodge City, Kan.

It’s a lot of same crowd and atmosphere he’ll experience again in Kansas City, Mo., next month, too, he said.

From late fall through early spring, salesmen like Smith display their latest and greatest equipment at such trade shows.

Once spring planting rolls around in April, the farmers to whom they sell remain too busy for any sales pitches until crops are harvested in autumn.

It’s the same for everyone in Smith’s profession.

“It is a little funny. You travel all over the place, but you see so many of the same people at every stop, doing the same thing,” said Smith, a Nebraska sales representative for the Kansas-based company Abilene Machine.

Smith — while pointing out many of the same businesses that were set up near him at Colorado farm shows in previous years — said he’s attended the Greeley event since the 1980s.

“Can’t complain,” added Smith, who said he spends four days of every week on the road. “You meet a lot of good people.”

Many of the exhibition booths at the Colorado Farm Show are occupied by local businesses.

But many are willing to travel to what’s one of the best-attended agricultural trade shows in the region.

Over three days, the event’s attendance adds up to more than 30,000, and during the 49 years of the Colorado Farm Show, it has attracted businesses from all 50 states, and even some from out of the country.

Arnold Payne, a salesman for Yuma-based Agri-Inject, came from out of the country to be back in northern Colorado for this week’s farm show.

“This is one you definitely have to hit,” Payne of the Colorado Farm Show Monday, having just arrived back in the states after attending an event in Canada.

Payne noted that he’s attended the Greeley show the past 12 years — squeezing it in between his trips to Louisville, Ky., South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Georgia and other stops on the agricultural-trade-show circuit.

“It’s always a great one to be at,” he said. “Always draws a good crowd.”